Georgia is leading the nation in returning control of education to the state and local school districts! SB 167 has passed out of the State Senate and is now in the Georgia House of Representatives. This bill is the strongest anti-Common Core bill to pass out of a legislative chamber in the nation, and its restrictions on data collection and data tracking are by far the tightest in the country.

The House Education Committee will hold a hearing on the bill this Wednesday, March 5. The exact time and location will be announced on Tuesday afternoon and will be posted at georgia.stopcommoncore.com. Your presence is needed on Wednesday, and your phone calls are needed now.

SB 167 will:

Allow Georgia to potentially abolish Common Core from most Georgia school districts as early as the next academic school year.

Implement an open standards-review process that will allow parents and other interested citizens into the previously closed-door process of setting standards.

Enforce a prohibition on national standards and the testing of national standards.

This bill is the only hope we have right now of restoring control to Georgians. Every year Common Core remains in effect, it will be that much more difficult to dislodge, and the companies eager to profit from Common Core's high tech bonanza will become much more difficult to stop.

We can expect the following attacks on this bill:

Big companies such as Google are now lobbying to strip the entire data-privacy portion of the bill because they know strict data security interferes with current data-mining practices.

Superintendents are attacking the bill with false rumors, even advancing the ridiculous claim that the bill gets rid of norm-referenced tests such as the SAT. This bill does not even attempt to replace any current Code section on norm-referenced testing.

Some complain that the bill does not go far enough because it should mandate an immediate statewide withdrawal from Common Core rather than allow local control over that decision. But if SB 167 had done that, it would have failed in the Senate Education Committee. Further, some complain that it does not provide a total return to local control as was the case in the early 1980s.

Some attacks on the bill just originate from a lack of understanding on how to read legislation or from confusion about how it fits with other existing state or federal statutes.

SB 167 is our only hope of escaping Common Core in the foreseeable future. Your efforts are urgently needed this week with the House Education Committee. Call all House Education members by Wednesday lunch. Use area code 404 for all members.

Email the Chairman, Vice Chairman and members of the House Education Committee and urge each one to vote in favor of SB 167 and to vote in favor of only the amendments approved by Sen. Ligon. (See below for comprehensive list of members.)